Monday, September 27, 2010

This was supposed to be a self gratifying post showcasing my 20-minute rushed essay sans heavy revisions for my Sociology class tomorrow, but after browsing over several pages on the internet, I've decided to just write whatever I feel like writing.

Excuse the randomness.

On second thought, I guess I'll write my thoughts later when I get back to my room.

Yes.

The Parents have decided that my laptop, Q, has Capulet as a family name, and that our family has changed our name to Montague, and since they think that the equation

violates the omnipotent and omnipresent laws of Existence, they have subsequently resolved to keep us apart.

So there we go, folks, I have been separated from my Q, beloved and dearest, then again since

Hell hath no fury like the Spiral Prince love-scorned

I sincerely doubt they can keep Q and I apart forever.

------Here is the essay I wrote to make the deadline, forgive whatever grammar atrocity I've committed in writing this oneHaving read the article, I can say that the southern Indians have done a great job in and of themselves. I was struck by the way they transcended over a norm that has been set by and has ironically limited their society's progress over several millennia. I was also disappointed and somehow unsurprised by the focus northern Indians have placed on politics, seeing that the same thing has been and continues to happen here in our country. As an outsider and someone who watches from a third person vantage point, I believe it's sad to see these Indians not learning from their own kin. I mean, as an outsider, I think it's pretty obvious that the southern Indians of lower castes have accomplished what progress they have accomplished because they gave their attention to actualizing what was at first a desire to lead better lives through working instead of getting busy with politics. I believe they Carpe-diem-ed their way to the top instead of, as the article put it, 'asking for a bigger slice of what was fast becoming a smaller cake.'

This is a first hand example of what can be achieved when one who desires progress works for it instead of asking another person or a group of persons to bequeath it to them. Progress is a bounty as much as it is a toil. I commend the mindset, willpower, and perseverance of those Indians of the Nadar caste. Recall that the caste system has been around for millennia - these Nadars were facing off with a system that has dictated the lives of generations upon generations of Indians before them, and for them to achieve something that is literally life-changing is something worth emulating, especially for us Filipinos.

Now, we, as Filipinos who desire progress, might be fazed by the downs of our government, but we must not let ourselves be walled by this setback, which leads me to share yet another latin phrase:

"Aegroto dum anima est, spes est"

which translates as:

"As long as a sick person is conscious (or, has a good character, or reacts), there is still hope."

Thursday, September 23, 2010

A self-portrait of my character, Siam, for the MUD Lusternia. It still needs lots of love, though. I hope to be able to finish this before the month ends. Goodness knows how long it's been since I last submitted an artwork. Besides, it's very relaxing to draw! I've started work on a few other drawings as well, so I get to have something to do.

I basically drew him from imagination, which is a first for me, given that it's a digital drawing, but hey, I guess it shows that I've learned! I hope to continue improving, too.

P.S.

It's yet another product of my obsessive compulsive drawing.

Did I mention? I like my character's eyes.

Star-eyes. Star-eyes.

For those who are interested, here's my character's in-game description:

He is an ordinary human demigod and is a gargantuan figure of living shadow. The darkness that swathe his form devour all light that strikes him, leaving no trace behind. Flickering orbs of sapphire blue and emeral green glimmer constantly, twin star-eyes untouched by the hungering darkness that surrounds this demigod's form.

Also, the fire rimmed things are scrolls. Since my character, Siam, is a demigod, he gets to have shinies, like all other demigods in-game. For Siam, he's constantly surrounded by spectral flame-wreathed scrolls.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

...is something I don't have. I've been told that my aura reeks of snobbishness. Seriously, I'm just shy. Experience taught me that I can only get a shot at getting people to like me if I try to talk them into it.

Literally.

Sadly, unlike some people, I haven't been gifted with insanely strong pheromones. I can't hope to just flash my winning smile at people and have them do what I want. I need to win over to my side using my mouth and what semblance of wit I possess. I can't really complain since this talent, as I'd like to think of it, compensates for my lack of charisma.

It doesn't mean I still don't get wistful when I see really charismatic people, though.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

"Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless?"-Tom Bombadil to FrodoBaggins The Lord of the Rings Book One, Chapter VII In the House of Tom Bombadil

Who are we when all our personas wither away? Who are we when our souls are bared and brought to light? Who is the phantom when he is unmasked?

It is never easy to live life, it is as fragile as glass dangling by a single hair, and as volatile as gasoline by an open fire. If this is the case, how much more difficult can it become when we start to live double, triple, or even more lives? We swathe ourselves in layers and layers of half-truths that these ultimately become our truths, aside from facades in order to face society and the world. We separate parts of our whole being in an attempt to fit into a potentially discriminating environment, alienating us even to ourselves. Do you know who it is you see in the mirror? Do you know who lives your life everyday? Do you know who talks and stays with the friends you like and those you don't? Do you know who smiles for you when you feel like doing otherwise? Do you know why you're unsure?

It's because we weave personas into existence. Isolated parts of ourselves tailored to satisfy society's judgemental eye and inculpatory finger depending on the time and situation. When we divide what what is supposed to be a whole, we only get weakened divisions, we get weaker shades of what we could be. Deep down we know this, but we justify our act by believing it will help us survive. Well, while it might help you survive the moment, it won't be able to help you in the long run.

Why do we create these personas?

The answer is simple: it's because we're all unsure and insecure.

We are all afraid. We fear rejection. We fear isolation. We fear being unwanted. We fear to be unloved. We irrationally fear a million other things every second of our fragile lives. Life is not too short for us to fuss over these things, the Time allotted for us to live is.

Time spent lamenting the obstacle before us is time wasted. We cannot forever waste ourselves before our fears. They aren't walls that stretch infinitely in all directions, they're walls we can climb over with effort. Courage and strength may initially provide us the vigor to start the long, and usually slow climb, but these alone aren't enough to surpass our fears. If we truly wish to be victorious in this endeavor, we need to reconcile ourselves with our fears. I mean, before we can even attempt to scale the wall, we have to accept the fact that it exists right there before us and that if we truly want to be better persons and become stronger, we have to climb that wall, not go around it - that's evading the problem, which isn't really healthy.

My point here is that we may be able to cloak ourselves in ambiguity, half-truths, lies, and whatever we can think of, but deep down, we have an idea of our true selves, despite all our attempts to hide it.

A box stashed away in a dark corner doesn't disappear, and even when you can't see it, you still know it's there, biding its time until you cannot deny its existence anymore.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

I drift on and on, across the grey ocean,with the sky beneath and above me,above, a velvet vault adorned with stars,beneath, a clear blue laced with clouds,together they trace patterns of their own,muddled glimpses of past, present, future,memories, foresight, imagined; abstract,ever do I dance between sleeping and waking,but in dreams where both bleed and mix,I find peace. Yes.I find peace in my colour dreams.----------------------------------

I recall I dreamed of you, First, a few hours ago. You texted me and said the book was effing good. As with any other dream, it wandered out of my mind. I only ever recalled the dream, and you, since I saw your poems. I realized it was one of those dreams, again.

One of those dreams that gave glimpses of the future.

A future involving persons and things related to the persons in the dream.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

I'll always be more comfortable with phones which have keypads over those with touchscreens. Why? With keypads, I can press down as hard as I want to. A lot of my emotion gets released as the message is written out, helping tone down whatever I write in the message. Less vitriol, yes, but it also lessens whatever damage I may cause. Heck, I can just keep pressing down on them long and hard and find myself at ease after a while.

I don't know what to make of the number 143, which as you may all know, tracks my profile view. It wasn't 143 before I wrote Strike Two, but hey, after writing a melancholia-ridden, and love-panged post, it shows itself. Is this a sign? A mere coincidence? Or is this a very human attempt of mine to perceive order out of chaos; a harmony out of a design?

From my belief that all things happen for a reason, and that things are connected and will inevitably lead towards a point of synthesis, I have formed a habit of connecting one event or thing to another. As I write this down now, I sometimes wish I didn't, oft times I feel like I read the signs too well.

As of the moment, most signs point towards this one thing I don't want to happen, but hey, I can't chain people to me. I just wish that if they choose not to push through with their plans, they'd tell it straight to my face rather than making me go through the anxious and paranoid wait.

Maybe the saying that says intellectual people are stupid when it comes to the matters of the heart is true. Right now, I wish with every fiber of my being that it isn't, and that all the sacrifices, all the compromises I make aren't all for naught.

Strike two, Voice Person.

Maybe you aren't making things up, but I've found a sliver of reason to think otherwise, else, my trust in you and your words would've remained untarnished, and so now my paranoia has been raised to a higher degree than it was a few days ago.

I sorely want to believe only truth came out of your lips.

But hey, that's me, one of the most paranoid persons you've met, I hazard.

It has been decided: I'll keep Faith.

I just wish you'd call. That's better than a dinner-date, for now, at least.

I am usually impervious to sarcasm. Experience has taught me that whoever loses his temper first loses the game. I have long since become able to hold my ground in the sarcastic verbal swordplay that oft ensues as a form of jest between friends, and on the rare times, a form of verbal scythe desired to cleave through an adversary's character.

There are times, however, when I am caught unaware. This usually happens when I am being serious and in no mood for games. Spiral prince defense-mechanism usually kicks in and my mouth becomes a machine-gun, firing away in a 'Die, bitch. Die.' kind of way, or so I imagine it does. I just keep mum about it, and watch as yet another crack traces itself in my crystalline ego. I love peace, after all.

The thing is, when I get an unexpected blow, it tarnishes my relationship with that person. I have a long memory for transgressions done against me, seeing as I rarely inflict it on other people, I've long since imbibed the belief that I do not deserve such treatment into my system. In a similar vein, I've a long memory for the wrongs I've done to others, leading me to be at worst, awkward, and at best, civil, around them. As Lady Gaga and Beyonce on their Telephone music video said,

"Trust is like a mirror, you can fix if it's broken."

"But you can still see the cracks in that mother-fucking reflection."

We shouldn't light fires where they aren't needed. Aside from contributing to the Greenhouse Effect, we might burn whole places down. I consider it an insult when I things like this get slammed down my face. I mean, I don't deserve to be treated like that. Play around, sure. We can fool around, I'm game. But when the situation calls for seriousness, then by all means, please comply. We're social beings after all, and being the social, and usually civil, humans that we are, we have to make sure that our relationships stay healthy. We should give and take;we should learn to reciprocate - it is how we grow into better persons in the long run.

As of now, yet another sliver of my long and overstretched patience has been burned; yet another strike has been inflicted upon me; yet another line joins the graffiti of tallies on the wall of my being. And all of these vandals against my humanity have been done for a petty reason - someone else's passing happiness at my stupefied face and voiceless shock.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

I walk the gray road now, unsure, but hopeful. The land is under perpetual twilight, the witness of the velvet dance of sunlight, moonlight, and starlight. Mauve flowers and blue-gray leaves sway in the cold breeze.

The pilgrim prince has come.

Their rustling murmur, light as a feather, has become music to my ears now. Together with the soft whisper of my raiment, and my fox-light footfalls, they play the symphony of my journey.

The pilgrim prince is here.

The stars call to me softly. They whisper in my ears, enticing me to look to the twilight vault and discern the patterns they traced in their wake. Faint memories of the celestial dance wrought of fading starlight and stardust - that is what the designs are.

The designs will shift soon, pilgrim.Trace them while you can, prince.
The stars see everything. That's what I've been taught. Great sages of times long gone who wished to know the workings of world submitted themselves to the song of creation, and thus learned the dance. Solitude is the price they paid for their knowledge, and thus they are far away - beyond the reach of mortal kind.

Trace the dance, prince.Discern the design, pilgrim.I look to the heavens and read the signs. They do not bode well.Still, I go on and heed the stars no longer. I still hear echoes of their song as they left.

Heed the dance, pilgrim.Heed the design, prince.
I walk on in search of you.

Friday, September 10, 2010

I am very pleased to announce the opening of the Spiral Photostudio right here in my room. Aside from having a new pastime, I'm really happy about this since I can experimenta lot of my photography ideas. The thing is, it's still bound by walls since I'm still limited to a camera phone that is not at all that great, a wooden figure, and a trash bag.

Yes, folks, you heard that right. To save you all from the trouble of reading something which is potentially twice as long as you like, I'm sharing a few photos with you. That's what I recently got into, right?

the pioneering models

test shot

test shot

test shot

test shot

'behind the scenes'

'behind the scenes'

literally 'behind the scenes'

Well, that was all of it. I hope I can really learn something from this.

P.S.

Don't worry about the black trash bag, it hasn't been used, and it most probably will never be used.

Long blog post short, I have just realized that there are many sides to honesty. It's not exactly easy to tell which side of honesty we're facing in every day life. Heck, it's not even a breeze for us to tell which face of honesty we're wearing - we have issues, we have fears, we have doubts, we have a whole army of things that prevent us from being wholly honest. The faces of honesty, however, become more pronounced in blogs, it may be due to the almost invulnerable anonymity we can swathe ourselves in, but I digress.

There are two prominent faces of honesty that I have identified from different blogs I've read over the course of several months. There are blogs which are honest and impersonal. It is here where you find dark secrets, desires, fantasies, anecdotes, and a lot of other things which might make prudes aghast at best. I have nothing against these blogs, in fact, I find them very interesting, and, well, thought-provoking. They show us a different side of reality - one beyond the usual conformity that we find in society.

There are also blogs that are honest and introspective. These are the ones about the personal issues, ideals, and beliefs of the author, and these are prone to boring the reader as they tend to be long. That aside, length is not really the issue here - it's more of whether or not the reader can relate to what's in the article, or at least what he thinks is in the article, and should the reader finish reading it, he appreciates the journey he's had.

So, there it goes folks, a snippet of something that came to me as I drank and conversed the dawn away with Kuya Allan.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I am brimming with happiness right now. Seems like the ways of the world are indeed connected to each other, and neither we nor our experiences are an exception. There is a quiet serenity even as the last domino falls, and if we try to, we might be able to see the hidden design they traced in their wake.

Time heals all wounds, and weathers away the walls we built around ourselves. It allows us to contemplate on our past, and empowers us to accept what has come to pass. It makes us realize the importance of the present, and encourages us to look forward to tomorrow's promise. It bequeaths to us slivers of wisdom woven from time's memory, and with this, we are able to live better lives if we use them well.

I am thankful for the bridges that have been rebuilt, and the friendships that have been renewed. If the month of September has started with such fair fortune, then I hope it stays with me all through the month. I have dire need of it, and strength internal to face what I need to face.

Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side.~The Talmud